And just a reminder about the one unquestioned achievement of the CFP:

The Coaches Poll used to count for one-third of the formula that was used to determine the BCS standings and national championship participants, but is not part of the determination of the College Football Playoff, which uses a selection committee to determine participating teams.

That’s almost enough by itself to make me stomach a sixteen-team playoff field. Almost.

At the New York Times, you’ll find a nice summary of where things stand with just a couple of days to go before the expiration of Judge Wilken’s delay in the order going into effect.

One thing worth reiterating is this:

After the three-week trial last summer in Oakland, Calif., Wilken found that the N.C.A.A.’s rules were illegal. This does not mean universities must share licensing money with players, only that the N.C.A.A. cannot prevent them from doing so.

If the appeals court doesn’t grant the stay the NCAA seeks, I figure Auburn will be out of the gate on this before the weekend is over.

As noted before, Georgia’s raised its COA figure to middle of the pack by SEC standards. And Seth Emerson reports it’s a fluid situation.

McGarity said UGA, especially Morehead, will be keeping an eye on COA figures around the SEC and the nation, in the hopes it levels out. If not, they’ll revisit Georgia’s next year.

“Our president has been very involved in the whole issue of cost-of-attendance,” McGarity said. “He has been very vocal in his concern about an uneven playing field, about the consequences that has now become evident, even in our conference, about the vast differences.”

It’s not that they’re scared of what they’re paying players. It’s that they’re scared of what everyone else is paying them.

I see another Greg McGarity PR campaign has been launched. He’s tough, but often misunderstood. Just ask him.

“You have to understand that the decisions that you make will always be challenged by everyone,” he said. “Maybe not challenged, but questioned. …I’ve always felt like any decision that’s made is made in the best interest of the institution. Sometimes that’s not in the best interest of an individual or a team or a coach or what have you. …I think sometimes people assume, they guess. They might read what’s on social media and then they form their opinion at that time. A lot of people voice frustration, they don’t understand. We are basically limited at times to talk about it until it’s all over. The hope is people would trust you to make the right decisions.”

The funny thing about this is that events of the past six months have overtaken the concerns about a dysfunctional program many of us had last December. Immediately after the bowl game, this comment would have had me stewing. Now, I find that I can’t get worked up about it anymore. So feel free to keep spinning, Greg. As long as everyone associated with the program appears to be rowing in the same direction, the rest doesn’t matter to me.

“You might take a freshman and they are being punished for having better grades. They might be forced to play even though they needed a redshirt year,” Mullen says. “One of the thoughts I had was there’s a mandatory academic redshirt year for a certain group of people…well, if you are above that new standard you should get five years of eligibility. Why punish someone who might be forced to have to play?

Well, that’s nice, but he’s a coach, so you can figure there’s another agenda lurking in the background. And there is.

His idea is to counteract the NCAA’s requirement, set to go into effect August 2016, which requires prospective student-athletes to have a minimum GPA of 2.3. If the recruits can’t hit that 2.3 GPA figure but are above the old 2.0 scale, they’d be forced to take an academic redshirt year. The NCAA also raised its sliding scale based on GPA and SAT/ACT scores, and now requires recruits to have completed 10 of their 16 core classes before their senior year.

Mullen imagines a hypothetical scenario in which multiple players have to take an academic redshirt year, and how that’d force other guys into playing time before they might be ready. That’s the impetus behind his push to give those players an extra year of eligibility.

If Mullen’s idea were passed, it could dramatically change the way programs recruit. Schools would still recruit talented players with shaky transcripts, but the benefits of signing a stronger student would be big when another year of eligibility is on the table. It would even the scales a bit for programs with tough admissions standards.

So what he’s really after is more signing flexibility. That, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. (In fact, if it leads to less pressure on coaches to futz with players’ grades, it’s likely a good thing.) But the bottom line here is that this is about giving guys like him a lifeline to be able to manage continuing to bring in athletic talent that isn’t so talented in the classroom. And to the extent that eases the pressure on high schools and high schoolers to bring their academic efforts up to a more serious level, that isn’t such a good thing.